


Miracle on 34th Reef

by meh_guh



Category: Marvel
Genre: Christmas, Crack, Gen, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, everyone is a sea creature
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-03
Updated: 2015-01-03
Packaged: 2018-03-05 03:16:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,824
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3103532
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meh_guh/pseuds/meh_guh
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve is an ex-Navy dolphin with PTSD. Bucky was his pup-hood best friend. Tony is a meddlesome seagull.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Miracle on 34th Reef

**Author's Note:**

  * For [aliassmith](https://archiveofourown.org/users/aliassmith/gifts).



'..and that's why my _latest_ design is-'

'Tony,' Steve blasted an extra-forceful breath out his blow hole and turned to glare. ' _No!_ '

'No, no, no,' Tony flapped his wings wide to puff his chest out and almost lost his footing on the algae-covered outcropping. 'Steve, _babe_ , this one is one hundred per cent genius!'

'That's kinda what I'm afraid of,' Steve muttered into the swell bouncing off Tony's rock. 'You almost sank that boat last week.'

Tony made a rude noise. 'Who cares? The only people in even a little danger were _humans_ and that creepy shark with the...'

He trailed off and Steve had a moment to reflect that he really hated every choice he'd ever made that had led to him being here right now. Tony tilted his head to aim first one unblinking eye then the other at Steve.

'Oh,' he said, tone victorious and vicious. 'I _see_. Never thought you had it in you, Captain Flipper.'

Steve rolled to kick a finful of sea over Tony. 'I've told you not to call me that.'

Tony spluttered, shaking himself off and glaring at Steve alternately. 'But you're so damn _helpful_ -'

Steve twitched his tail again, and Tony subsided with bad grace. He chattered at Steve for another few minutes, then glanced at the sky and shot off towards the shoreline without even saying goodbye.

'See ya, pal! No, _you're_ the greatest!' Steve shouted at Tony's retreating tail feathers, finishing with a mutter. 'The greatest _jerk_.'

Steve hung around the outcropping for a while, enjoying the pull of the waves threatening to smash him against the rock if he stopped concentrating. It was his favourite game these days, seeing how close he could get before his reflexes failed and he wound up bleeding.

He gave up before long, though. He could smell Natasha somewhere nearby and she'd never let him hear the end of it if he got Bucky's attention by sending him into a feeding frenzy.

There were better ways to make Bucky spend more than thirty seconds with Steve, and most of them didn't even involve much dying by either of them.

****

Bucky had found Steve when they were both pups; Steve had been skinny and fractious and not-quite-freshly abandoned by the pod after his mother died.

'Not a great part of the ocean for ya,' Bucky had said, circling Steve in a way that was somehow not in the least threatening. 'Shouldn't you be off frolicking up top?'

'What's it to ya?' Steve had snapped back, charging over to throw himself in the bull shark pup's way. 'You think you're gonna kill me?'

Bucky had laughed, and Steve had relaxed. It was the first time he'd spoken to anyone since the pod left and it hadn't turned violent.

They'd grown up not quite attached at the fin; Bucky would bring skinny, asthmatic Steve fish he could never have caught on his own, and Steve would chase off any pods who ventured close and started eyeing Bucky challengingly.

Even _if_ the pods had always swum off snickering about the skinny, crooked adolescent thinking he could beat them. What mattered was Bucky had looked after Steve and Steve had looked after Bucky. They were a team.

Everyone knew if you wanted to find Steve, you looked for Bucky and vice versa. They'd been happy, if isolated from the rest of their respective communities.

Bucky had been his best friend for years, then one day he'd vanished. No one had any clue what had happened, not even the corals they lived near that Bucky had used to charm and flirt with because the way they waved their tiny fronds always made Steve grin. So Steve, after working himself to the point of collapse looking for Bucky, had joined the navy.

Even five years later, Steve hated thinking about the experimental training and treatments he'd undergone. Sure, they'd fixed his crooked tail and made his lungs work properly. Sure, he'd doubled in size and could now leap high enough to do a triple somersault (something Tony _loved_ except when Steve aimed for him when Tony was on his way to do some more insane science). Sure, it was everything he'd spent his whole life chasing, but it had been deeply unpleasant and the work had been stressful.

****

It had been a covert mission against a Russian underwater base that had led to Steve resigning his commission and going sort-of on the run from the US Navy.

'Command said the commies have been using robotics,' Dum Dum had chirped as the platoon shot towards the shield generator, Steve on point to deal with the guards, Dum Dum and Jacques flanking Morita and his explosives. Falsworth and Gabe were hanging back behind a rock formation in case they needed cavalry.

' _Command_ ,' Morita had laughed, shooting a derisive smirk at Dum Dum. 'You mean that pretty little female Command sends for the refreshments.'

'Silent running,' Steve had twisted to issue the order, so he'd been caught entirely by surprise when something inky-black and way too fast had appeared and sunk its teeth into his shoulder.

Steve and his attacker had gone crashing down into the depths of a ravine, chased by the cries of Steve's team before they'd rallied and continued with the mission. The destruction of the soviet base was more important than trying to help Steve fight one of the Red sharks.

When Steve finally managed to shake loose by bashing his assailant into the cliff wall circling the base, he'd twisted to slam the shark into the wall and hold it in place until it suffocated, but he'd pulled up short as soon as he'd seen him.

'Bucky?!'

Bucky had glared, shaking his head and sending a cloud of blood drifting towards Steve. His skin had been riddled with fresh scars, and one fin had been replaced by a wicked metal blade. The replacement fin was articulated, more flexible than Bucky's remaining fin, and it had something that looked like a laser mounted on the end.

Before Steve could say anything further, though, the shock wave of Morita's bomb had washed over them. Steve, too shocked to brace, had been thrown against the cliff and Bucky had fled.

****

It had taken two years before Steve had managed to find Bucky again, and even now he was still skittish and quick to swim away.

It had actually been Natasha, a sleek and deadly mako shark Steve had met while on the run from the navy who had found Bucky. She'd brought him around one day, ragged and wild-eyed and ready to snap his jaws every time Steve ventured too close.

'They worked him over, Steve,' Natasha had flicked her tail at him. 'The Red Room makes sure they wipe the mind as clean as they can so they've got the best possible weapon.'

'He's still Bucky,' Steve had insisted, trying the wide-eyed sad look which had been so very effective ten years previously. Bucky had looked away.

'Yes, Steve,' Natasha hadn't rolled her eyes, but she'd sure sounded like she was. 'He's just going to take a while before the Bucky you knew is nearer the surface.'

So Steve had set his jaw, nodded and settled in for the long haul of getting his best friend back.

****

Tony's deeply irritating method of getting Steve's attention was to fly over him and drop a coconut on Steve's head when he surfaced for air.

'I swear, Tony,' Steve shouted, rolling over once to rinse the coconut fibres out of his blow hole. 'One day you'll dive too close and I will _drag you to the sea floor_.'

'Yeah, yeah, yeah,' Tony said around a beak full of some land plant. 'C'mon. Threats later, go find your shark buddy.'

Steve wanted to tell Tony to go away; wanted to go somewhere completely different just to spite him, but he'd arranged with Natasha to meet her and Bucky out where the currents joined.

'Oh, whatever,' Steve muttered and set off, only a little faster than Tony's comfortable flying speed.

Natasha shot Steve an amused glance while Tony circled over the three of them, but Bucky just kept up his own lazy circling without comment.

'You really should go find out why he flew all the way out here,' Natasha said after a few minutes watching Steve trailing along in Bucky's wake. 'If he exhausts himself and falls in I may have to eat him and I really dislike gull. Far too stringy.'

Steve blew a string of irritated bubbles at her and resurfaced to glare up at Tony.

'Steve!' Tony opened his beak and went into a brief dive to catch the plant in his foot. 'Go ahead! I brought the mistletoe!'

Steve watched Tony spiral in a tight loop. 'I don't know what that means.'

'Oh,' Tony wiggled his foot and the plant. 'It's a human thing they do this time of year. You put some of this stuff over them, and they mash their faces together. Then they mate.'

****

'I thought you were friends with the bag of feathers,' Bucky said when Steve dived back to them. Up top, Tony was squawking indignantly and trying to scoop up his damn mistletoe in between shaking water and Steve's spit out of his feathers.

'I am,' Steve said after a moment of being too shocked to react. That was the first time since he'd been taken that Bucky had initiated a conversation, and excitement was making Steve's heart pound. 'But he needs taking down a peg or two some days.'

' _Most_ days,' Natasha corrected with a smirk. 'Now, I have an appointment with a narky octopus, so can I leave you boys to entertain yourselves?'

Bucky snorted and lazily pointed his laser guide at Natasha's dorsal fin. 'Well, if you want to spend your time with purple idiots instead of us-'

'Blue idiots?' Natasha finished. 'I think I really do. Have fun, boys.'

Bucky and Steve watched her until she disappeared around a curve in the reef.

'So...' Steve did a few quick rolls to dispel some of his twitchy energy. 'You wanna do something?'

Bucky smiled at him, barely a shadow of the wicked grin Steve missed but a genuine one. 'Let's go get into some trouble, Steve.'

Steve let out a laugh and butted his head into Bucky's side. 'When are you ever _not _in trouble, jerk?'__

__Bucky's smile morphed into a smirk and he shot off in the opposite direction Natasha had gone. Steve gave chase, laughing as Bucky put on speed. A shoal of mackerel scattered, screaming, but Bucky just kept racing towards the open ocean._ _

__Steve swam up to do some joyful leaps as Bucky swam hard for the sake of swimming. They had a long way to go, and neither of them would ever be the pups they had been but Steve had Bucky and that was more than enough for him._ _

**Author's Note:**

> Alternate titles:  
> Frosty the Robo Shark  
> Captain Amerifin: Winter Snorkler  
> Joy to the Seas  
> Here we come a Wassailing among the Seaweed Green


End file.
